feet of clay
Jul. 31st, 2003 01:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyGeorge Eliot isn't actually one of my favorite Victorian novelists, but I've always admired her for being tough-minded and feminist, so it's a little disappointing to discover that in fact she was neither.
She didn't think women should have the vote: "the very fact that 'woman seems to me to have the worse share in existence', she thought, should be the 'basis for a sublimer resignation in woman and a more regenerating tenderness in man'" (Haight 396), and in general seems to have subscribed to the repugnant Victorian ideology surrounding the Angel in the House:
She did at least approve of women's education (she would have had to be a howling hypocrite not to), but the unconventionality of her life--as Haight's biography is making very clear--was a matter of a single decision on her part, the decision to "marry" George Henry Lewes. And the unconventionality of that decision was forced on her by the behavior of Lewes's legal wife and the state of the divorce laws, not by any wish on hers or Lewes's part.
As for the tough-minded part ... she was so incredibly sensitive to criticism that she convinced herself, Lewes, and her publisher John Blackwood that she was entirely unable to write if even a hint of disapproval of her writing was breathed in her presence. It looks more like a writer's offended amour propre to me--she cut off the series of Scenes from Clerical Life because Blackwood had the temerity to criticize "Janet's Repentance"--but it's perfectly clear that she and Lewes both believed devoutly in her fragility.
As Lewes wrote to Sara Hennell:
Picking up on a theme in the discussion of my most recent Sayers post, Lewes is clearly an example of a man who considers his wife his work, and Eliot was clearly more than willing to be his work (in fairness, he was also her work, but in a much less caretaker-y, nothing must interfere with the expansion of my friend the genius way).
Most writers (if not all) are morbidly sensitive about criticism, but we deal with it as best we can. It pains me to see someone otherwise so ruthlessly intelligent behaving ostrich-like and allowing herself--as a contemporary hack-writer Mrs. Oliphant put it--to be "kept in a mental greenhouse" (Oliphant, qtd. in Haight, 369). My ego would love it if I had someone to censor negative comments for me, but my writing would suffer immeasurably.
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WORKS CITED
Haight, Gordon S. George Eliot: A Biography. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968.
She didn't think women should have the vote: "the very fact that 'woman seems to me to have the worse share in existence', she thought, should be the 'basis for a sublimer resignation in woman and a more regenerating tenderness in man'" (Haight 396), and in general seems to have subscribed to the repugnant Victorian ideology surrounding the Angel in the House:
We can no more afford to part with that exquisite type of gentleness, tenderness, possible maternity suffusing a woman's being with affectionateness, which makes what we mean by the feminine character, than we can afford to part with the human love, the mutual subjection of soul between a man and a woman--which is also a growth and a revelation beginning before all history.
(Eliot, qtd. in Haight, 397)
She did at least approve of women's education (she would have had to be a howling hypocrite not to), but the unconventionality of her life--as Haight's biography is making very clear--was a matter of a single decision on her part, the decision to "marry" George Henry Lewes. And the unconventionality of that decision was forced on her by the behavior of Lewes's legal wife and the state of the divorce laws, not by any wish on hers or Lewes's part.
As for the tough-minded part ... she was so incredibly sensitive to criticism that she convinced herself, Lewes, and her publisher John Blackwood that she was entirely unable to write if even a hint of disapproval of her writing was breathed in her presence. It looks more like a writer's offended amour propre to me--she cut off the series of Scenes from Clerical Life because Blackwood had the temerity to criticize "Janet's Repentance"--but it's perfectly clear that she and Lewes both believed devoutly in her fragility.
As Lewes wrote to Sara Hennell:
Marian [i.e., George Eliot] felt deeply the evil influences of talking and allowing others to talk to her about her writing. We resolved therefore to exclude everything as far as we could. No one speaks about her books to her, but me; she sees no criticisms. The sum total of success is always ascertainable, and she is not asked to dwell on the details.
Besides this general conviction, there is a special reason in her case--it is that excessive diffidence which prevented her writing at all for so many years, and would prevent her now, if I were not beside her to encourage her. A thousand eulogies would not give her the slightest confidence, but one objection would increase her doubts. ...as it is very desirable she should suffer no more pain in this life that can possibly be avoided, I suppressed your mention of those whose bad judgment you reproved, because I knew it would occupy her thoughts and worry her during my absence. ...
... I only wanted to explain a general principle àpropos of a particular case. The principle is this: never tell her anything that other people say about her books, for good or evil; unless of course it should be something exceptionally gratifying to her--something you know would please her apart from its being praise.
(Lewes, qtd. in Haight, 369)
Picking up on a theme in the discussion of my most recent Sayers post, Lewes is clearly an example of a man who considers his wife his work, and Eliot was clearly more than willing to be his work (in fairness, he was also her work, but in a much less caretaker-y, nothing must interfere with the expansion of my friend the genius way).
Most writers (if not all) are morbidly sensitive about criticism, but we deal with it as best we can. It pains me to see someone otherwise so ruthlessly intelligent behaving ostrich-like and allowing herself--as a contemporary hack-writer Mrs. Oliphant put it--to be "kept in a mental greenhouse" (Oliphant, qtd. in Haight, 369). My ego would love it if I had someone to censor negative comments for me, but my writing would suffer immeasurably.
---
WORKS CITED
Haight, Gordon S. George Eliot: A Biography. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968.
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Margaret Oliphant
Date: 2003-07-31 12:00 pm (UTC)Re: Margaret Oliphant
Date: 2003-07-31 12:09 pm (UTC)My definition of "hack" is precisely someone who defines literature as a commodity. (I would have no objection to describing Shakespeare as a hack, if we had proof that that's how he defined his plays; he was just a genius hack.) It doesn't necessarily mean their writing is sub par.